


hubris

by guybuddyfriend



Series: collection i [1]
Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9195287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guybuddyfriend/pseuds/guybuddyfriend
Summary: and his hands would plait the priest's entrailsfor want of a rope, to strangle kings





	

**Author's Note:**

> lagueracalabazera.tumblr.com/post/149312507380/marcobodtschickennuggets-a-a-anyways-h-heres
> 
> here guy

Kyle knows he is done.

The edge of his cloak drifts into the river. He is alone in this fight now, without court and keep, without a friend in the world and he is five years old again, at his mother’s feet listening to his father tell him for the first time what his duties will be and he is ten years old at the stables holding his first sword and being thrown into the dust by a sparring partner and he is fifteen years old at his first family funeral being crowned and he is twenty at his first war and twenty at his first battle and twenty at his first battle lost and twenty at his first war lost and twenty at his first friend’s funeral and twenty at his first rebellion and twenty at his first act of accidental treason and he is twenty at his first act of purposeful treason and he is twenty at his first slaughter of rebels and twenty at his first tyrannical act and he is twenty, he is twenty, he is already twenty and he is barely twenty and as he listens to his own troops rallying behind the great wall surrounding the town a mile behind him he sobs in desperation.

His own general abandons him as he weeps for a cause greater than the both of them, his advisor jumps ship to join the rebels in preparation for his coup d’état, and his court has never been loyal to anything but their bag of gold at the end of each week; he knows this will be his last day on Earth. If it were not him leading his empire into digging its own grave, he knows he would be back there, with Stanley (whom _he_ knighted, with whom _he_ spent years with as youths, shared meals with, shared a _bed_ with, do these fools know _nothing_ of the complicity of the _situation_ ) and with Wendy (whom _he_ pulled from a barn fire, whom he rode horses with every _day,_ who was the only sparring partner that could keep up with him, with whom _he_ spent years with as youths, shared meals with, shared a _bed_ with, my _god_ , they’ve left him because they don’t think he is whom they once _knew_ but he _is_ he _is_ he truly _is)_ and he too would be fighting and rallying and calling for the king’s head; but in this life, in this place and this time, in this space it is _he_ who is king and he owes them that- he owes them his head.

Kyle allows his thoughts to pour from his mind at last, allows them to become the only action he is capable of performing, allows them to run down his face in hot little rivulets and he sobs into his hands, he is devastated, he is demolished, he is death. Kyle, High King and Emperor, is now under siege by his own court, his own army, his own people, his own friends, his own actions, his own thoughts, his own, all his own, and he is all on his own.

It is not until he hears the distinct sound of a lute string snapping that he raises his head. He knows by the sharp sting that there are red prints over his eyes and forehead from his hands, and he aborts the action of turning his face to the intruder halfway through it. The lute with the snapped string clatters to his feet as it’s owner hauls himself over the log, and after a moment where time seems to still, the court bard is settled on the fallen tree alongside his king.

“James,” Kyle acknowledges him. It is flat, he has no emotion left to uplift his speech.

“M-m-my liege,” James replies, with the same note of respect he has paid Kyle since his inauguration. They stare into the river for a long moment, and out of the corner of his vision, Kyle catches James’ eyes trailing along Kyle’s damp cloak. James moves to pull the cloth from the water, but Kyle swats at his hand. He will sit in his own despair.

“You n-n-never let your p-pride get the b-b-b-best of you,” James murmurs, voice heavy with sarcasm. “Esp-pecially with h-hundreds of lives and the f-future of a kingdom in your h-h-hands.” Kyle’s face snaps to his and he snarls.

“You uncouth bastard-“

“Sp-p-pare me, Your H-highness. I kn-n-now you. F-four years in a c-c-court with someone r-reveals m-much.” Kyle feels his strength leave him almost completely at the statement.

“What do you want, James?” It is barely a question, because Kyle cannot find the heart to raise the tail end of the sentence.

“How l-l-long do elves l-live, usually?” James asks, letting his feet dangle into the river.

“Far longer than humans,” Kyle whispers, casting his (too young, _too young_ ) eyes to the horizon. James pitches off the bank of the river, held up only by his arms as his weak legs are swept out from beneath him in the river.

“James!”

“R-r-relax, my l-liege. The current is n-never as strong as it s-seems.” James slides into the water and snatches onto a root curled into the side of the riverbank. He lets the spray blast back his hair and breathes deeply, and Kyle gets the feeling James feels more at home in the water than on land.

“C-c-come on then,” James rumbles, eyes closed, content in the current. Kyle stands and hooks his thumbs beneath his cloak, before thinking better of it and wading into the water with his clothes still on. He is waist deep, and finds himself barely fighting to stay upright. He crouches in the waves, and James turns so he is laying on his back, legs sprawling ahead of him downriver.

“I h-have something f-f-f-for you,” James murmurs as Kyle leans against a large, current-softened stone. Kyle voices his interest in a quiet “oh?”

“A s-s-song from the C-c-college,” he says. “It’s e-elven. I asked them to s-s-send me anything they found from the N-n-northlands in their l-l-last Rune exped-expedition, and th-this is what they b-brought me.”

“Where is it?”

“In m-my head, m-my liege. I put it to a t-t-tune, for your l-last d-d-day as k-king.”

Kyle sniffs haughtily. “My last day? What makes you think I’ll ever have a last day?” James merely opens one eye to look at him. “Perhaps I was planning to flee the kingdom, start afresh in a new town. Conquer elsewhere, spread the name High King Kyle.”

“I d-don’t think you could ever sp-p-pread your name any f-f-further after the last w-war.”

“Perhaps not. But I could have fled.”

“You’d n-never.” Kyle is silenced. There is an unspoken agreement between them- he is too attached to this land, these people, his own sense of honour, as twisted as it may be now, to ever abandon his fate here.

“If y-you did l-l-leave,” James sighs, reluctant to even say it. “Y-y-you could take the s-song with you, and make my m-music f-f-famous.”

“I’ll take it with me wherever I go. Sing it to me.” James cracks both eyes open now.

“D-d-demanding, for a disgraced k-king.” Kyle sniffs.

“Disgraced, but still king,” brushing a hand over the crown tangled in his curls. James lets go of the root and Kyle automatically reaches for him, hauling him up into his arms practically out of habit. James pulls the crown out of his hair, out of his conscience, and suddenly Kyle is merely a man, not even elf, and he is staring another human creature in the eyes for the first time in moons. James’ eyes widen and soften as Kyle curls his arms tighter around James’ slight hips.

Kyle’s eyes close and he revels in his sudden humanity, and when soft, well-used lips touch his gently, Kyle makes use of his leverage and squeezes around James’ shoulders. In this very moment, in this quiet, healing second, Kyle is as human as the people he led to death. James kisses him one more time, and Kyle realizes this ( _this_ ) is a long time coming, that Kyle has been an object of the bard’s desire for longer than he’s known. Kyle knows this is James’ goodbye to everything that could have been, to dreams on lonely nights and the sweet twinge of pain when what _could_ be just barely is _not_. After today, there will be no more _could be_.

“Kyle,” he murmurs.

“K-k-kyle,” James whispers back, reverent and differential. They circle one another, bouncing lightly in the river’s current, eyes locked and breaths synced.

“K-kyle,” James breaks the silence once more. “Kyle, p-please.” Kyle knows he is taking advantage of using his name now, because after today it will be burned from books and records and mouths. It must taste sweet, to James, for the way the edges of his eyes crinkle at the syllable.

“James,” Kyle prompts, eyes searching and pleading at the same time, but for what, neither know.

“Don’t g-g-go,” James whispers, knocking his forehead against Kyle’s and closing his eyes. “Please-“

The sound of glass shattering and battering rams blasting into wood breaks James off. Both sets of watery eyes lift to the horizon and cast to the wall, as if seeing through it to the hordes of people storming a castle for a king who has long since fled. Kyle’s eyes flutter shut and he loses himself for a cold, damp moment in the bitter, metallic taste of self-hatred. He breathes in deeply, like it’s his last breath, and straightens to his full height. James slides the crown over his curls as Kyle stoops to lift him to the river bank.

“Will you g-go?”

“I will, James. Be well.” Kyle does not wait for a reply, and with his soaking cloak blasting behind him and resolve in his step he storms through the abandoned gates of the city his father built and he destroyed, through the square in the centre of a town that suffered the loss of a war it was never ready to fight, around overturned carts and past half-burnt, pillaged buildings, emptied homes and the dead left in the streets, waiting to be mourned. He shoves open the remnants of the huge castle doors and hauls up, in all his pride, in front of a crowd with more power than they will ever know.

“ _Behold,_ ” he roars, “ _Your High King!”_ He locks eyes with Stanley, who screams in rage and with blood burning and hands ablaze he lunges for the man he once called his closest friend, hands clawing and hatred tearing through him like the dullest blade. Kyle hears Wendy shrieking for his death, a public execution among the soldiers he sent to their death in their own town square, and Kyle goes limp. They drag him by the arms first, hordes of people stamping at his shins and thighs, rushing forward to gather around the site of his imminent death. At the base of the stairs they drop his limbs and use his hair to drag him the fifty feet to a makeshift chopping block, on top of the well’s grate. It’s the highest point in the square, but Kyle knows these passion-driven fools are about to poison themselves with his blood. This is their only source of water for hundreds of miles, and they won’t know where to dig for another well. He says nothing.

The screams are deafening, the rage is suffocating and Kyle can no longer see the sun. When they finally stand him before his people, Stanley is gripping his hair from behind ( _as he once did sometime between dusk and dawn an age ago; a tear slips out the corner of his eye unseen_ ) and Kyle is presented to his kingdom in a state of shame. Wendy calls to them screams over the clamour, that they _leave him in his clothes- make a mockery of him, a tyrant in the clothes he slaughtered for_. He snarls, but for the show of it. Inside his mind, he knows she wishes she wasn’t urged still to strip him and desecrate him by power of the revolution around them ( _because she wants to be the only one who ever sees him like this, no king, just man; a broken sob tears from her throat unheard_ ) and Kyle struggles inside his robe for her. Stanley forces him to his knees, and kicks him to the block ( _gently? Perhaps a little gently, but Kyle will never know_ )-

“One final request!” Kyle cries over the din, voice hoarse with disuse and smoke, eyes sprawling and shoulders shaking. He dares not press up against Stanley’s boot for fear of an untimely death, so he waits until he is acknowledged and turns his head. He feels the crossbows follow the movement, and he licks his lips slowly.

The cheers and taunts and screaming ( _god, the screaming_ ) dies to a murmur, and he calls for the bard. James limps forward, frown creasing his features. He says nothing. Kyle lifts to him, eyes and face but nothing more for the boot on his back, crushing his spine. He does not think of Stanley. He ignores the eyes burning into his cheek and the folded arms impatient. He does not think of Wendy. The cacophony is nulled in his eardrums and his chest is ablaze with the kind of suctioning bursts of flame in a spontaneous field fire, roaring across his heart and to his face.

“The song, James,” he croaks. “Play me the song.” The people are not amused, and with a harsh discordant cry the clatter resumes with renewed vigour. Kyle feels the bones in his back crack under the pressure of Stanley’s steel boot and Wendy’s molten gaze peels the very flesh from his skull.

And to the sound of James’ melody, the call of a distant, ancestral people who lauded themselves with skin of iron and bones of steel, molten blood and rocks for hearts, he lets the rage of his people wash over him. He hears the beat of drums far away, a steady thrum in time with the crackling of the fire that burns his family legacy from the soil of this world that calls him from the Earth at last, and his final thoughts are not with his closest friend and second hand, or with his advisor and favourite colleague, but with the only man who would ever mourn a tyrant. His cloak brushes around him and curls over the block, settling into a pool of blood.

Kyle knows he is done. 

**Author's Note:**

> bye buddy


End file.
